The linkages between social media and political participation among Malaysian youth

Abstract

In the globalisation era, social media has played a significant role in spreading information about all human activities, including business, social, economic, and political issues. Also, it provides new avenues for political engagement. Numerous studies have reported that there is declining political participation, especially among Malaysian youth. Thus, it has led many research studies to concern social media and its effect on Malaysian youth's political participation. This study aims to analyse the linkages between social media (time spent on the internet and online activity) use for political participation among youth in East Coast Malaysia. The design of this study is a quantitative approach through cross-sectional data. A total 348 university students in East Coast of Malaysia have participated in this study and collected through a self-administered questionnaire using purposive sampling. The data analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics, involved frequency, mean and standard deviation and correlation test by assisting SPSS-25. This study found that time spent on the internet has no significant correlation on Malaysian youth's political participation. Also, online activity has significant correlation on online and offline politics. However, online activity's correlation coefficient is categorised as a moderate positive correlation on Malaysian youth's political participation. In conclusion, the trend was discouraging as majority youths were not interested in participating in politics. They do not interest due to majority of them worried about government punishment. Even the government amended the country's law to allow greater freedom, and youths' reception was lukewarm. It seems that the amendment still fails to attract the attention of most youths, especially university students.